Greetings Legal Geeks, it’s been far too long since I updated so you may have forgotten who I am.  Well here’s a quick reminder, my name is Chris, I’m a 1L, now I must go read for 27 hours, kthanksbye.

Okay in all seriousness I am a 1L who is going through the law school process at an average American law school and my job here is to teach you what I can about life as a 1L.  Claire wrote an excellent post about surviving your first week of law school, but I’m going to do something a little different.  My fellow legal geeks have also posted about useful topics such as briefing, so I’m going to post about the dreaded 1st year as I live it.  In this first installment I’m going to share with you the two most useful pieces of advise that I have seen.

The first piece of advise I received from the president of my student bar association.  He said that while law school is a lot of work you should spend at least one day a week just doing something for yourself.  I’m not sure if being a week into school qualifies me to say this, but I wholeheartedly agree with this.  I have yet to “freak out” about law school, and I honestly believe that this because I have sectioned off my week so that I have time to be myself.  Which brings me to my second piece of advise given to me by my contracts professor.  Using the example I will give bellow he told us not to lose what makes us unique and interesting.  I give you an excerpt from the Biography of Elliot L. Hoffman, a founding partner of Beldock Levine & Hoffman whose “civil litigation credits over the years include high profile and successful actions and/or defenses on behalf of Pablo Picasso, Luciano Pavarotti, Michael Crawford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Broadway Video, The Who, J. D. Salinger, Frank Zappa, The Newport Jazz Festival, Judas Priest and Tony Bennett.”  Clearly Hoffman is a very accomplished lawyer, yet he still finds time to be an amazingly interesting person.

Hoffman ventures have included conceiving and promoting the “Sunshine Showdown”, the 1973 Frazier/Forman Heavyweight Championship Fight in Jamaica;  acquiring The Philadelphia Fury, a North American Soccer League franchise and serving as its Executive Director 1977-1981; and serving as a founding director of The Newport Folk Foundation, The New York Jazz Repertory Company , The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and as co-Trustee of the Eubie & Marion Blake Music Scholarship Fund. He also plays tolerable jazz piano, vibes and soprano sax, rides a Harley and can be seen dancing with Cyndi Lauper  in her “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” video and soliciting charitable donations to Joey Ramone’s bank account in the Ramones’ “Something to Believe In” video.

So no matter how hard law school gets don’t let it change who you are as a person.  Okay back to work and reading about the Act Requirement for me.  P.S. I’m including the Cyndi Lauper video for reference (sorry embedding is disabled), he’s the man in a suit reading the newspaper at about 2:25.  This is the kind of lawyer I want to be when I grow up.

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